Running Red
by superschade
Summary: As Armin struggles to come to terms with what he's done, he realizes that a close friend may be the medicine he needs to heal the wounds he's sustained. A short vignette to go with Chapter 59.


_Beware! This story is set in the middle of Chapter 59, which as of my writing this has not been translated into English yet (at least not to my knowledge). TL;DR: spoilers are eminent. Sorry, I know I should have waited, but I just had to get this little plot bunny out. I hope you like it!_

_**Disclaimer:** I do not own Attack on Titan. If I did, we would have seen LEVI'S ABS a long, long time ago. I mean, damn, lookit 'em! You could grate cheese on that well-cut washboard! Ah, my goodness..._

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"Under those circumstances...who's to say if your decision was wrong?"

"Eh?"

Jean looked up questioningly, but Levi had already redirected his attention to the kettle sitting on the fire before him, pouring the last bit of hot water over the dregs of tea in his cup. He said nothing as he swirled the watery tea around, the rest of the team watching him in equal silence, and winced as he lifted the cup to his mouth with his right hand.

"Damn..."

"I-is your arm holding up well, sir?" Sasha asked hastily, leaning forward. "I tried to keep the stitches to a minimum, but I don't know if-"

"It's fine," Levi interrupted, waving away her concerns with his other hand. "Hurts like a bitch, but it'd be a lot worse off if you hadn't treated it."

He gave Sasha a small nod as he sipped his tea, and Sasha sat back again, relieved. Once again, the group fell quiet as they glanced back and forth between Levi and Armin, who was staring into the fire with his lips pursed. He seemed to be oblivious to everything around him, his face frozen in an unreadable expression.

Jean, sitting beside Armin, swallowed the knot in his throat and tried to ignore the bead of cold sweat rolling down the back of his neck. He, too, fixed his gaze on the flickering embers; he didn't want to look at anyone anymore, didn't know what to say.

Tilting his head back, Levi drained the contents of his cup and stood up slowly, sighing. "Come on. Get this cleaned up, we've got work to do."

"Sir?"

"If we want to get the princess and the moron back, we need to bag a couple of bastards first," Levi said languidly, dumping his sodden tea leaves onto the dying fire. "Let's make a plan, shall we?" He tossed the cup into his bag and motioned towards the door. "Sasha and Connie, each of you take a gun. I'm putting you two on guard duty while we're outside."

"Yes, sir!" Connie hurried to retrieve a pair of rifles from the corner of the barn and handed one to Sasha. "But... wouldn't it be safer to discuss plans indoors?"

"Maybe," Levi said shortly. "However, each minute we sit here is another minute we marinade in the fumes of horse shit, and I personally would rather risk being outside for a few minutes over reeking for the next couple of days."

Without another word, he walked around the fire and clapped Armin roughly on the shoulder twice as he passed by before heading outside. Armin started at the contact, snapping out of his daze, and watched Levi leave before casting his eyes down, drawing his knees into his chest.

"..."

Not knowing what else to say, Sasha quickly stood and followed Levi out with Connie at her heels after offering Armin a small smile. Jean got up as well, dusting his pants off, and jerked his chin towards the door.

"Well...see you guys outside soon," he mumbled at Mikasa, who nodded. Jean exhaled heavily and placed his hand gently on Armin's shoulder for a moment before clearing his throat and heading out. Now, left alone, Mikasa watched Armin's face intently, but he showed neither movement nor change in expression. She had almost never seen him like this; even on the day that Shiganshina fell, he had been there for Eren and her, trying his best to stay positive in light of the grim events of that day. But now...

Mikasa sidled closer to Armin until her arm brushed against his and peered at him through her fringe.

"How are you doing, Armin?" she asked gently, mirroring his sitting position. "Are you feeling alright?"

"I...I don't know," Armin admitted softly. "To be honest... I don't know what to think right now." He buried his face in his knees, his words muffled behind them. "Even after what Captain Levi said, I still can't bring myself to face what I did. I mean, I was prepared to face death when I became a soldier, and I've seen so many of our friends and comrades die in front of me...and I was ready to kill Titans, but this..."

He trailed off and drew in a shaky breath. When he lifted his head a moment later, Mikasa saw tear tracks glistening on his cheeks.

"Hey, Mikasa?"

"...hm?"

"You...you and Eren have both..." Unable to get the words out, Armin gulped and shook his head. "How do you... How did you come to terms..."

He didn't finish his sentence, but Mikasa understood the question. She pulled her scarf up over her mouth and thought for a moment.

"It's hard to say," she said finally, dropping the fabric from her face. "Even now, thinking back to that day... Some things are just a blur, while other things stand out so clearly that it could have been just this morning..."

Mikasa closed her eyes. "Do you remember, Armin, when we first met? When Eren introduced us, he said that he couldn't tell you how I came to live with the Jaeger family, but you just smiled and said hello... Do you remember?"

"Y-yeah, I do..."

"...and do you remember when I finally told you the truth about that day?"

"Yes...after they brought it up at Eren's trial..."

Mikasa nodded. "So you remember what you said to me then, don't you? After I told you that Eren and I had killed three men when we weren't even ten years old?"

"I..."

Armin looked up and met Mikasa's gaze for the first time that evening to find her staring back at him, a familiar steady determination burning in her eyes. "I...yeah. I remember," he murmured.

"You said 'you did what you had to do', didn't you?" Mikasa persisted, holding her eye contact with Armin steady. "'You two survived. That's what matters'. Isn't that what you said?"

Armin opened his mouth soundlessly, unable to come up with the words and just nodded instead. He ducked his head and bit his lip, locking his fingers together. Mikasa tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and continued speaking, her eyes and voice softening.

"Armin... You've always been so smart, Armin. Think about the probability of you keeping your hands clean for so long; it would have happened eventually, right? If you didn't sully your hands with someone else's blood, then that someone would have their hands covered in your blood, right?"

"I-I guess..."

Mikasa nodded, nudging her knee against Armin's. "Besides," she said, "if you hadn't done what you did today... If it hadn't been for you, we would have lost another comrade today. Would you rather have this stranger's blood dirtying your hands, or Jean's blood?"

At this, Armin stared at Mikasa incredulously. "Why do you even need to ask? Jean's our friend... I'm so relieved that he's alive..."

He trailed off, looking away sheepishly. Mikasa smiled.

"That's good."

She wrapped her arms around Armin's shoulders and rested her head against his neck, pulling his small frame into an embrace. Armin stilled; in all the years he'd been friends with her, he could count on one hand the number of times Mikasa had initiated contact with anyone, but he felt his resistance break down as the searing knot of guilt in his stomach slowly ebbed away, leaving behind a small bit that still ached, but that was much easier to handle.

"It's not easy," she murmured. "Eren says that for a long time, whenever you wash your hands, you'll see the water run red off your skin. Each day, though… each day it'll get lighter and lighter until one day it runs clear again. That day will come eventually, but it will come without fail. And you know, Armin, Eren may be wrong about a lot, but he isn't wrong about this. At least, it's held true for me."

"…Mikasa… do you ever think about it? About… them?"

"Sometimes," Mikasa answered; she did not pretend to misunderstand. "Every now and again, I'll see their faces in my mind, especially the one that had Eren by the throat." She sighed, stirring strands of Armin's hair lightly with her breath. "But then I'll see Eren's face and think that if I hadn't done it, if I hadn't stabbed that man when I did, then Eren's face wouldn't be there for me to see. That's how I get through it."

She shifted her body slightly and tightened her hold on Armin. "Back then, I didn't know Eren and he didn't know me. We were just strangers, and we'd never even seen each other before. Even so, both of us felt like we had to save each other, even if it meant doing the unthinkable. The feeling was so strong…but it must be so much stronger when it's a friend you're trying to help, and not a stranger."

Armin let out a shaky laugh and brushed away the last few tears that had spilled down his face. "Yeah… I just wish we didn't have to encounter any bloodshed, ever. Everyone who's been killed because of this war… Even if they were the enemy, they were still just people…innocent people at the end of the day. "

"Maybe," Mikasa agreed. "But whether they were innocent or not, it's our job as the ones who are living to remember the ones who have fallen. We fought and we won, we proved to be strong. We're the ones who carry the memories of those who lost, aren't we?"

"Yeah…you're right." Armin gave Mikasa a melancholy smile and returned her hug, squeezing tightly for a moment before letting go. He wiped at his eyes. "Thank you, Mikasa."

Mikasa shook her head. "Don't thank me, Armin. You mean so much to me, and you've helped Eren and me so much since the beginning. I didn't want to see you like this anymore." She rose and extended her hand to Armin, pulling him onto his feet. "We all are going to journey beyond the walls and see the world when this is all over, didn't we? We're going to see the seas of salt water, the tundra of ice, the mountains of sand, and everything else you read to us about the outside from your book."

Armin nodded. "We're all going to get there once we're finally free," he promised. "I'm going to make sure that it happens with all of us, together."

"Good." Mikasa gently took Armin by the wrist to lead him out of the barn. "We should go help the others," she said. "We'll need your tactical skills to come up with the best plan to get Eren and Historia back."

"Ah, yeah," Armin laughed, smiling widely now. "The princess and the, uh, moron."

"That stupid midget," Mikasa hissed as they walked outside. They could see the rest of the squad seated on a collection of stumps in the clearing before them, gathered around a single lit lantern. "I'm looking forward to never seeing him again when the battles are over…"

"Huh? But I thought that you were on good terms with Captain Levi now!"

"Yes, but then he does things that make me dislike him again."

"Oh, Mikasa…"

"He does, though."

"…okay, then."

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_**A/N:** I apologize for ending it a little abruptly, but I really wanted to finish off on a lighter note after all the heavy stuff in Chapter 59. I tried to weave this fic into the manga as seamlessly as possible, so it begins with my quoting some of the panels and ends sometime before they capture the two MPs. _

_Funny story: I'm currently staying in China for a few weeks and was reading the Chinese raws on my phone on the bus when I looked over and saw that the guy next to me was ALSO READING THE RAWS ON HIS PHONE. So, obviously, I was like ! and we had a super long and drawn out conversation about the chapter and SnK in general and I totally geeked out and I ended up missing my stop by five stops ._. But whatever, I managed to get back home and banged out this fic as soon as I sat down at my computer! Neat-o, huh?_

_I just thought that Armin could really use a hug after everything he'd been through that day, and who better than one of his two close childhood friends? I think that a lot of the time, EreMika feels and their whole dynamic overshadow Armin's relationship with Mikasa. They may not be as deeply connected as Eren and Mikasa are, and they might not have the total bromance that Armin and Eren do, but I still think that they're quite close to each other and should get that recognized more! _

_Also, I got the impression from the anime/manga that Armin didn't really know about how Eren and Mikasa **really** met until after they were in training, so I stuck that bit into the fic; consider it headcanon... But more importantly, did anyone else notice that when Grisha was yelling at Eren for putting himself in danger to save Mikasa, he never once said, "Son, killing people is bad"? Dear lord..._

_Anyway, sorry for my ramblings, I just have a lot of emotions about SnK right now XD _

_Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! Much love!xoxo_


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